My Thoughts, Your Time

Tag Archives: relationships

I saw the ghost of my four years gone, my past in a shadow of white-blonde hair and wide-shy smile. That smile; the dip of the head, slow slump of the shoulders which belonged to a bird, lost in flight. I knew from the moment I saw her – we watched each other with the careful appraising eyes of the remembered, the lost and found, the sufferers and the perennial recovering. Her open words might come across as forthright to some; I heard the dry and tired laugh, saw the premature lines about the beautiful eyes, and knew the world had somehow hurt her, so that frankness can be the only way forward. It had made her bow her fair head and cry until her eyes bled at the corners, until she fell to her knees, but still eventually got back up to walk for hours on end in the rain, because to stay still too long was as sinful as the thought of rest, of care, of nurturing and nutrition.

Fourteen years, and one moment more.

We knew each other, without the word being raised until fifteen minutes or so had passed in conversation. I’ve had this pattern before. First it is “I was ill… I dropped out …” then it becomes “enrolled again” and “boyfriend” and, the faint wet shine of hope in the eyes. The lowering smile, and this time I had to put a hand to my chest because it hurt. Because I remembered how it all felt.
Daring to try again, at being human.

I’ve taken to listening to songs from 2007 again; to a time out of relapse, out of college, post-A Levels and fresh dropout from university. A lost cause, so it felt. I listened to a lot of Snow Patrol then, and Aphex Twin, and – wait for it – the Steve Jablonsky score from Bay’s wonderfully awful Transformers franchise. Don’t get me started on the faults of those films. Suffice to say that the score is an entity all its own – soundscape of ping-heat metal and scything instrumentals, billowing brass and cathedral choral echoes, with the incongruity of pale hovering woodwind to evoke the more peaceable nature of the Autobots (“Optimus” is a beauty.) That being said, “Scorponok” is such a thrill race that it’s almost impossible not to watch the clip from the film, rife with the ugliest plane in existence (to my mind at least) – the dear old Warthog, gunning the living daylights out of the eponymous Decepticon.

I listened to this soundtrack while cleaning my former landlady’s house. She works the sort of hours that require a multifaceted mind, and I relieve her in whatever ways I can by doing what she can’t always find time for. The added bonus is Saturday night’s treat of rum and sushi dinner paid up, cash in hand. I’m not exaggerating when I say the weekend has become my cherished time. With two part-time jobs, spread out over six days, Saturday night and Sunday are all about lying on my back and staring at thoughts swimming past in a medley of colours, listening to this and that, experimenting with new hairstyles and scratching out lines on the pages of a novel which wants to take flight, albeit on weighted wings. It’s coming along. I’ve taken to using Scrivener, as a sort of Pensieve for this fuzzbox mind – it helps me deliver some lines for each session, when I sit and attempt to concentrate for more than fifteen minutes. This is becoming increasingly difficult. Whereas in school and college I’d indulge myself by jamming a book of poetry or manga between the pages of a curriculum text, now I force myself to focus.

She says, while losing the thread of her thoughts. I did laugh at myself, there, and went to pour myself another coffee and a rum. Not together, no. I just like the tingle of hot and cold; the combi of caffeine and alcohol will probably kill me at some point, but let’s not get our hopes up.

So while cleaning the house, this fragment of my past and another future stepped forward, delicate and fine-strong, ancient as seashell, new as a daisy on the lawn. I see it, time and again, and we always acknowledge each other. Those who’ve known cold fingers on the shoulder. We reach out, in a way I can’t seem to (at peace) any more without a passing comment. My driftaway thoughts, this random heart, now stark and angry in its silence, in the absence of a forming picture. I wonder when I’ll see the stars unclouded again. When anything will make sense.

Underneath the stairs
remember all those worlds
we waves the sky to white
as the light rays flickered in
but the time it drained the colour from your skin.

We gave up enough to each other in the space of an hour to fill one of my old pocket journals – laughed over things thrown and said Inside, while shuddering at the memory of violent thoughts and an alien side, the feeling of restriction and prevention and Oh I Can’t! and, When will it End? And grimaced over calorie drinks, the foot in the bathroom door and the prohibition and taking tentative steps forward, in remembering real Hunger, as opposed to Starvation. Or in my case now, Appetite. This is the trickiest part, dear reader. Learning that “normal” does not belong to anyone, and it’s part of us all the same. We make our own lives, because we live them in ways no one else can. My needs and wants are mine alone, and if I want a Doubledecker I’m going to fucking have it, but believe me I won’t go pacing the night away to be rid of the damn thing if I can still hit the gym, and know that dinner will be something Else. The rigidity of meal plans and timed eating is just and right for those still out of tune with their own needs and wants – when the stomach is a numbness and the mind is an echoing tunnel, branching out forever without answers. Except the one Driving Force, which can push you towards the centre or the Exit.

Me, I lay low in those tunnels for years and a day. I am the Procrastination Queen. But the smallest, slowest steps still take us onward, even as others remark upon features and flesh, or make pitiful pleas for the secrets to Losing Weight (she mentioned how her mother longed for the dedication …) And I’ve known it myself with others, dear Reader, enough to know when to cut loose those toxic people, even as we’re bound by blood. Because no one stands in the way of recovery, if they can’t understand and won’t try. No one. I would rather live a lifetime alone, than be held down and back again for another day.

Inside we’re all ugly, one way or another. Beautiful in our minds, and appalling in the discovery of ourselves, in others.

Beckoning me on.
Oneness of blood, four and a year,
On the eve of my eye
And here we go again with this
Pain, and the wings a-wide, and
No one knew what to say.

I think it’s time to sleep. There hasn’t been enough of that recently.

She’ll be fine, I think. My former landlady is the sort of person who will know where lines are marked, won’t cross and won’t smear, but she’ll watch and wait all the same. She treats food not as medicine, nor yet as a comfort blanket, but as nourishment and friend. She cooks and eats for taste and for textures, making each meal an adventure of colour for the kids. I found myself under her roof in late 2013, shivering after the turbulence of losing home and partner in a stone’s throw, clinging to my job with both hands, knowing every shadow from the corner of my eye.
(Didn’t look hard enough)
And became, in my own creep-crawl way, the person you know of today. Full of flaws, as we all are, and a little older, not so much wiser but aware, perhaps of things I have no right to know. But by and by, they might come in handy. If ever I needed a sign of the changing times and the world, it came with the blood of a year.

How best to describe it – the ache in my chest? There were the wings of sunlight through the blinds, the pearlescent sky; the smell of weed, like mouldy teabags. The sound of pigeons passing overhead, less a presence than the passage of time in a stirring of shadows over the yard, with its silently-standing fleet of white and blue.

I stood at the window and took it all in. So soon, so far behind. I was awake hours earlier, waiting for the tinge of dawn to bring answers. Caught between work and money, fear and doubt (in myself, in others, in every single decision I have yet to make – a crumpled sheet can never be smoothed out completely), head and heart.

I have a job to fall back into, albeit on reduced hours because of budget cuts. I’ve another job to tack on the side, to make up hours. It actually works out quite well, spreading shifts out and allowing me time to write (rather than waiting until evening, when I’m likely to nod off over the laptop.) I’m back with the friends I know; back with a company I trust only slightly more than the cunts who let me down at the research centre.

I’m going to the Citizens Advice Bureau to see if I have a case for compensation on the grounds of unfair dismissal. The fact I hadn’t “kept in contact” in the two weeks between interview date and first day, is – as I suspected – a negligible point, used to cover their own backs. The way the contractor tried to lump the blame on me says everything about the standard relationship between cleaners and recruitment staff. A sheet full of nameless numbers is hardly an organized approach to dealing with people’s lives and income. The saccharine laugh and fumbled joke of “well, at least only you turned up,” settled my decision to make an example of her, and the company she works for if possible. Any compensation I might receive would ease up my current financial crisis; the satisfaction of seeing them discredited, would ease up my mind if it forces them to review their treatment of staff.

Trouble is, all too often hospitality staff will be abused in this way because they don’t know how to question management, don’t have a clear view of their employee/contractual rights, or have no wish to cause trouble.
I’m going to cause trouble. Ten years in this line of work, dealing with a variety of characters and situations, has taught me enough to know what questions to ask and where to go for help. I can guarantee that if this company has shafted me, they’ve done it to someone else, if not several someones. And they’ll continue to do so, maybe even if I make a claim and win – but at least I can say I tried.

*

Four and a half years is a chapter of a life. I knew about the move long before my own cleaning company did. Suffice to say, they didn’t have the sort of contingency plans in place to persuade me not to look for other work. I knew about the budget cuts to the constabulary as much as anyone else – how it would affect not only the duties of officers on the beat and in the backrooms, but their numbers, as well as civilian staff, facility arrangements and wages. I would’ve been hard pressed not to notice the shift over the years. How everyone has had to change and adapt to fit government prescriptions of what policing is. How, in general, they just roll with it all and get on, as ever, working to as high standards as possible in the face of depleted means and (to my mind) policies lacking common sense. I can read about it all and still not fully comprehend how it must feel, to know you are getting less while expected to give more.

I had the privilege of knowing the station in her better years. The fellow at front desk, with eyes like wicked light on water and a dry-gin laugh; he was always on hand to help a frightened youngster come to pick up lost property, or a gruff fellow on bail. Standing in the slatted sunlight last Friday, I looked around and wondered at the small echoes, the spin-twirl of dust motes fetched up on my breath. I heard his laugh again, and knew us all as ghosts. Even when that building finally falls silent, when the gates close and are locked behind us, we’ll still walk as shadows over the walls. Our voices will ring down the corridors, the dice will rattle in the box for tea and coffee runs; printers will murmur, our footsteps will ring down the stairwells where I once stood at the corners, to listen and breathe in the moods of the day.
(Develop a knack for diving out of the way.)

Places like that leave their marks on you, on your mindset. That doesn’t come into the job description. I was and am part of a working family, for the first time in my life – I accept the company of others and am glad of it, for humour like the blackest coffee (wham in the chest and burn at the throat), the random treats and Post-It apologies (to let you know you’re human) and the nights out under the twinkling blue lights of the city, across a sprawl of pubs and bars – after a long shift, there’s nothing quite like soaking up the light of an afternoon in a beer garden, or listening to the chink of glasses that shine white and gold under lamplight.

With tottering towers of plates and mugs at the sinks, I learned the crucial difference between taking on more than my usual duties (as we all must, and theirs include the sort of reaction times that warrant more responsibility) and saying No, I’m not your bloody mother. Those musty teaspoons helped to loosen up my fastidiousness around eating and drinking, as per obsessive compulsions; and when you’re tearing around trying to keep up with whoever’s tracked in clods of Whatever on their boots, it pays to be flexible. Food becomes energy, not the Bad Guy.

This correlates with my gym exercise, which has progressed from a serious need to burn off everything I eat to a desperate urge to gain muscle, to keep up with my workload (and lay down crucial bone minerals for later life – I live in fear of being stuck in a wheelchair again.) I’ve gained about 2.5 kilos, hitting my “target weight range” in 2013 – that is, the swing-point deemed healthiest for my height and build, after sticking at the same low anorexic level since 2004. This is in no small part down to the practicality of the people I work with. I can’t honestly say they’re all the healthiest eaters in the world, but they get on with the job because they have more pressing things to attend to, and not a heck of a lot of time to do them in.

I’ve learned to do the same, though admittedly in a less pressured environment. But it means I can walk into a supermarket and not spend up to an hour agonizing over what to have for lunch or for a snack. These days, I’m just as likely to grab a Double Decker bar as a bunch of bananas. That kind of flexibility… I couldn’t dream of, even a year ago. It pays to keep pushing boundaries, to see how far you can go. It helps along the way, to feel a bit uncomfortable. Resignation also plays its part. I am approaching 30, have known illness and restrictive behaviours for almost half my life. As I was told in hospital – and I didn’t believe it at the time – there comes a point when you must face the consequences of your actions, asking *Who am I trying to impress, with this lifestyle? This body? This mindset? What am I running from, trying to deny or to control, when it’s only inhibiting my life?*
(Boredom, fear, anger, frustration at seeing others progress while leaving you behind … they all add up.)

When the new owners move in, or workmen with bulldozers, or whatever, they’ll find the remnants of Blu Tac over the door and walls of my cupboard, where I kept snippets of the inside of my head. Articles nail-torn from papers, and postcards of the German town where I once lived, given as presents by my favourite guv’nor. Battered photographs of my family. A little sticker of a marked car that had the misfortune to be drawn in such a wicked way, I dubbed it Christine. The small window with its old-newspaper light, set too high up on the wall for me to see anything other than a swatch of sky, with gulls and kites wheeling past like clock hands to mark the shift from afternoon to evening.

That sky became another world. Standing on the top floor, listening to the shifting stir of the wind through cracks in the ceiling, I could watch the sun move from one point of the horizon to another over the hours. Pearl dawn – afternoon haze – sunset fire. The windows cranked open with a shattering of paint, like chipped little teeth, to reveal a rushing blast of air that lifted my hair up and set all the birds to flight.

The horizon is a bluish line, calling me still. The bronzed buildings make a city skyline. All of our tomorrows, done up in heat and surging traffic and voices. Behind me, only the silent shades of another time – those desks and chairs and bins from offices below, long since emptied, brought to stand and wait for the end. Name plaques on walls, each letter filled with dust.

A vague smile, as I remember one friend (since moved on) who told me about the skipper who’d died of a heart attack on site, leaving his ghost to wander the top floor between the bar and the pool table. Of course I laughed it off; of course my skin riddled up, each time something moved at the corner of my vision.

Lamplight softens the world and makes jagged lines of our faces – unnatural shadows. The skirling blue of lights is an imprint of memories on the wall. The blip of a siren is a raised hand, as I wander home through the fall of snow – or at 2am from London, in need of a lift. For someone who’s grown accustomed to isolation, keeping my head down to get on with the job, it was an achievement to gain a nickname. I will always be “Rach” to a certain number of people.

You’ll have your own experiences and prejudices and fears. I won’t denounce or deny them, but only offer this – behind every fluorescent jacket is a life. Mistakes, hopes for improvement, if not appreciation. Behind the stern face is a person looking forward to seeing their partner, family, pets, home again, when shift is over. And when one of them does fall, it’s up to their colleagues to hold the line. With heightened security threats across Europe, solidarity is needed more than ever.

I still can’t know what it means to walk towards danger when others are going in the other direction. Standing behind tinted glass, I see the world but can’t claim to know how it all feels. The tape, the pub fights, the moments caught between aggressors who want nothing more than to cave in the other’s face. The glint of a knife. The smell of raw blood, the slow surge of blackened mould.

But I know the tired smiles and the humour, the hand-squeeze on the shoulder, the quiet cry on the sofa, the well-sugared tea and the coffee that could strip paint off the walls. The cake runs on birthdays, the laughter at ingenious presents for Secret Santa. The shadows under the eyes of night-shift, returning after an early (late) RTC.
The gentle giant who showed me around on my first day, spoils me with book tokens and bottles of my favourite rum, keeps his team going on healthy snacks… and has bailed me out on deliveries when no one at head office picks up the phone.

Every creak of the walls, with tears of rain running down green and black for an old lady quietly weeping with age when she thought no one was looking. Tilt of the air, the wind whip-whining about the outside corners and over the courtyard. The light moving over the walls. The way each office has its own personality.

Four and a half years to find I can let go of inhibitions and fears, and know empathy for people I’ve never met. To learn how to read across faces and between lines, where all our lives go, those hidden places. Teamwork is the difference between life and death. Family becomes synonymous with chaotic mess, the closest bond without blood.

No, there’s nothing in the job description about all this, and I’m glad. Some things, you can’t anticipate. You just take life as it comes.

I’m trying to get used to this stillness. If I stand in the middle of my new bedroom, lowering my breath to shallow stirring, the only sounds come from outside, and then with the slow murmur of passing rain. Not a ping or a shriek or a rattle of plastic. When I do move, the echoes roll off the bare blank walls. Every nerve is on edge, waiting for the next –
But it doesn’t come.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore those kids. My now-former landlady too, and the dog. But as a writer, and one desperate to find what pockets of silence she can, Home is only a reality where there is a chance to think. With young twins in the house, accumulating (as kids do) the noisiest objects known to mankind, Silence is a commodity. A treasured part of the day or night. The reason my back is still ridged and my ears are pricked, is because I’ve become overly sensitive to disturbance. This doesn’t bode well for my threadbare writing career, which in the past year or so has nosedived, and I’m strung out on insomnia anyway so am more likely to hit the roof if a mouse farts.

All this moody-writer-bollocks is my own undoing, really. I used to scribble quite keenly between train journeys, stuck at some station or another with the widening bars of evening light spreading out over the platform, blue shadows forming beneath seats and the sweep-click of heels or a broom, the rattle-roll of wheeled luggage, the reassuring huff-breaths of staff scanning about with narrowed eyes that never linger too long on any one face. Then – as with anywhere else – it was necessary to just get my head down and spread my fingers out silently through my mind, touching on objects and lives and places. To hell with what was going on around me. That being said, as though dreaming, the outside world tended to seep through into scenes until the tap of bored fingernails on a bike became the last spatters of rain in a halo of dusk. You know the kind, where the ground simmers with summer heat and petrichor, light reflecting off the clouds until the world turns pink and gold.

Somehow, over time, this ability to zone out got lost in the fracturing nerves and listening-too-hard, sometimes for nonexistent sounds but all too often for the dreaded Bathtime. I own boxes of earplugs I no longer need. Music became my failsafe, an escape route, but whacked up too loud the rivers ran down my ears… and you know how much that can hurt.

I feel bad for saying all of this, but it was necessary to get it off my chest – to let this go, and maybe pin down what has prevented me from getting more than 500 words down of a night, if I’m lucky. We can throw into the mix:
Exhaustion, from an intense job and the lingering presence of an exercise disorder
Lack of enthusiasm for any of my opinions
Fidgety fingers going back towards one social networking site after another, to trawl for something other than the little voice in the back of my head reminding me of what I once was. What I had achieved. A novel (on its fifth draft, waiting patiently for me to remember my love of the extended narrative and interweave of lines.) An anthology of short stories (waiting less patiently for me to wrap a ribbon around their stems to pull the bouquet together) A couple of blog entries that are bones and skin, without flesh.
It’s not that I lose patience or interest, but conviction; my voice means nothing to a world that’s heard it all before.

Here’s a little snippet for context, for perspective – it did make me laugh, and then go quiet inside.
My paternal grandfather was a travelling man in his youth, and I mean that in the informal sense that he’d happily take his pushbike and pedal off across the countryside – Newcastle to York and back, often further – for days and weeks at a time, with a kiss for my grandmother and the kids, and a pillow of straw or raw feathers when farmers permitted him to stop over the night in their respective barns. Things were different then, of course – across a quieter landscape, with cars a rarity and fewer boundaries, Granddad wove along routes older than the towns and villages he would pass through, using drovers’ ways and nail-straight Roman roads edged with those ubiquitous stone walls that always seem ready to tumble down at the whim of the wind. He was known for his independence (and his boxing skills, in the local district – Nanna told me, as a child, that she refused to let him be called “Danny Black” in her presence.) He could take care of himself. He has a memory like a deck of cards, and you never know what he’ll casually pull out next. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’ve heard even half of his stories, the things he got up to and the places he saw, the people he met, while wandering over the North fixing watches and clocks (as was his trade then – his workshop is still a haven of sepia shadows, time counted down in dust.)

Over a decade ago, I went to stay with Nanna and Granddad after dropping out of college, to be monitored 24/7 to make sure I ate and got into bed to sleep. Anorexia was set on killing me, then. I was 17 and scrawny, with crossed wires and hot eyes. My grandparents were soothing, a familiar presence – and a relief for my poor Ma, who’d given up much of her own freedom to become my fulltime carer (again.) Sitting in the conservatory, I’d bask in the white and gold light, feeling heat on a body that could never be warmed from within (such is the cold fire of anorexia, it burns you with ice until your fingers and lips turn blue.) The words of my books swam before my eyes, but I’d try to read anyway, and complete crosswords in the newspapers that made even less sense. Obsessive compulsive disorder manifested itself in rigorous cleaning rituals – raw skin on my hands, from frequent washing – but also in the need for repetitive skimming of paragraphs. If I missed even a single word, I had to start again. The same thing happened while trying to get into bed; one missed step from the prescribed route of pacing and it was back to the door to start all over again. But when I did manage to sit, it was to be nestled among those cream pillows on a wicker chair, in a greenhouse-heat that I couldn’t possibly stand roiling off my skin now.

Granddad would swing past en route to water the flowers in the garden, or to feed the dogs down in the lower kennels, and would tell me stories of his youth. He has a voice like velvet, with a rumble of laughter that makes his eyes crinkle up into little fans. I could listen and forget, for a while, who I was… and think of where I had come from, a world through other eyes. After dinner, he’d sit with his laptop and painstakingly mark out those long-ago routes from memory, to an autobiography that I still have hopes of getting my hands on. When I asked him about it on his last birthday, he gave a self-effacing laugh and told me that he’d all but stopped writing it. Who would be interested in his thoughts, in his stories of a once-was time?

Well, me for one. Members of our family. Perhaps a good few others of a generation that once knew the freedom of a wandering life. And those who have never known it, have only ever found themselves caught between the diamond teeth and the sky. The world doesn’t know his stories because they don’t the inside of his head, what he saw and experienced, how he perceived it through a personal lens. The lives and names, which he’s somehow retained all these years.

I told him this. Asked him to finish the autobiography, if only for his own peace of mind because the regret was already casting a shadow under his words. He said “maybe”, but also “true”, when I ventured that no one has anything to gain from letting their life go by unmarked, especially one as colourful as his with its twisting bramble hedges and sudden rainfalls, empty open roads and bustling towns where local produce spanned the markets. Shipyards to gravestones. No one else can tell it all as he can (and in ways that crease me up, especially when Nanna’s out of earshot.) I didn’t say it in so many words, of course, but you know my blogging is only ever the Mariah Carey *Why use one note when you can use seven?* style. I don’t say much, aloud.

When the call ended, I thought back over my own fears and laughed at myself.

*

I’d forgotten how this town is full of gold light. Flatlands and grasslands and an open sky, minus the jagged lines of a city steeped in shadows and glittering windows, ancient walls, mirror-more lake with a stirring silt heart. I’ll miss that smell, deep and dark as plums, slick with its oily sheen of rainbows and bird shit. Fewer large birds here, only a solitary kite to angle and weave its roguish way about a raven, which banked sharply and went off on the skirling winds of the common. I like how breathless the high places are, when it seems your life will be snatched away in a moment. Gold light flickered between the bushes, and for all that I am far from that child –

I knew myself home, in the way of familiarity. This place is so much like the other, where I grew up, down to the snaking rail line with its thundering-pass and chiselled sound of sparks… and the way the light goes from brass to brushed gold, in the open bowl of sky. The independents on the high street, the soft lines of buildings turned to comfortable cakes with age.

I think I’ll be OK here. My new flatmate is as different from me in preference and taste as blue is to red, but our temperaments mesh in the need for solitude, for peace at the end of a long day. Sitting with a friend is a welcome thought for summer, out in the garden with its moths and twining ivy and roses, where the light hangs high in the trees. Fields to the back, with the sky a liquid blue.
And silence.

The last time I had set foot in this town, the leaves were all gowns of gold, filling a hallway to sweep down and around in an autumnal dance. We wandered the pathways beneath a lilac sky, churning up mulch with our scarred battle-boots. We were still as one, then.

We had come the distance, from Verulamium to the land where all that glitters is indeed gold, of many textures and valuations. Fierce fake tan and heels to take your eye out; champagne hair with curling tips, and a watch too heavy for so delicate a wrist. Passing by in our mud-spattered uniform of hikes, we stared at our reflections in the ghost-shine of windows, laughing at how we stood out. Thorns under the manicured nail.

But it’s really not all that.

It’s ancient twisting roads, lined with age-curved houses; it’s coffee shops with such thick windows that you might be peering through the bottom of a bottle. It’s well-tended gardens, and grassland bordered with a rambling churn of brambles and pale trees. It’s Rivendell. It’s ever-autumn, nostalgic light that seems to curve itself into the palm of the town each evening, no matter the true time of year.

It’s a golden hall that goes on forever and a day, when we walked as one; and I knew myself, then. Now, I am approaching 30 and am more confused than ever. My hair is overlong, in bad need of a trim and burnished by the strengthening sun. I wade through the pitch spilt from last year’s barrel, and the urge to drop a match is almost overwhelming.

(When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.) Desperate people do untidy things. I am not naturally a cruel person; it doesn’t sit well on my stomach, and though I can raise the walls of ice quicker than some, I rarely allow them to stay longer than a handful of days, before melting.

But patience wears thinner than ice. I hesitate to raise my voice, in case I break through my own barriers.

My life is my own, or so I had come to believe after therapy. The other day, when I walked off the site of the enormous complex where I shall start my new job in March, I felt a cautious flutter in my chest – a bird, opening its wings against the late winter light. Hope is a thready thing these days. I prefer to watch and wait, in the long shadows. Visor still down.
Dreaming of Mercy Street.

A new job, a new home, all in the space of a week. Tell me this a few years ago, I would have laughed. Me, manage all of this alone?
I have scarfed food while battering along unfamiliar pavements this week; I have missed gym sessions. I have cut loose from work to attend an impromptu job interview, risking my credibility. I have coped – done things that would once have triggered panic attacks. It’s funny what happens when Life crops up.
Anorexia still has brittle little fingers twined through my hair. But I gently break them off, one by one, each year.

Sometimes, things come together with such speed that it is as though a hand had gently nudged game pieces over a board. Two years ago, at around this time, they had fallen apart just as swiftly.
Who knows?

So, with a more secure job and a stable employer, increase in wages and a wander over a fresh canvas, I can – cautiously – say there is Hope. I can afford to travel to see my family again, to hike the Downs with my brother and get a sore throat from talking (it always startles me how this happens, as I don’t generally speak aloud much any more.) I can weave in and out of local markets, picking up coloured threads and bolts of material, one-of-a-kind purchases to send to people Just Because, as I used to. Usually tacked to a scribbled note, to prove I still have some sort of handwriting.
(Meandering over the page.)

I can jump on a train and head into the Smoke again, to see that blue-brown silk scarf on the horizon getting closer and closer, while my dreams of living beneath the steel and glass, the twisting gothic lines, seem to go further away.
One day. Once in a way.

Around this time of year, the sun has a complex routine it performs each morning (clear skies permitting.) Peering up over the horizon, its light reaches the windows of the building opposite the Nick – these are aligned in such a way as to catch and hold the glow like a burnished copper breastplate. The subsequent reflection throws long fingers into our own windows, so that every office on the top floor bursts awake in red and gold.

This is but one almost indescribable moment of true pleasure, of silence inside, that I will miss forever when I am gone.

Trust was a leaf that went spinning on coils
Of a wind that ached with the song of the rose
And we who are wanderers
(Always alone)
Not ever so lonely to call your name
We know ourselves safe, when turning for home
With a shifting of light over ruins and graves
Where dreams go to rest, in the lull of the dawn.

P.S: Those who I owe emails to, I apologise. Time is like smoke at the moment, with precious little left over to bottle for stories and blogging. Please bear with me.

P.P.S: It felt good to talk to you all again. Lately, it’s felt as though someone was standing on my throat. Now I can breathe a little more easily.

When it comes to Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, my thoughts and memories are of pubs and hikes, aching legs and red kites, and rain. Oh and the dole. A year or so spent wandering (yes, with the clouds) over hills and through sopping woodland, trudging through muddy fields. It’s easy to forget the harder times when life is good; and I’ve had it relatively easy-good for the past four or so years, having relocated to St Albans in Hertfordshire in 2010, when a job finally came up at the local police station. Here, I’ve found the sort of security that was craved back when I lived with my former partner, Jimmi, and his parents in a small village called Eaton Bray, on the outskirts of Dunstable. The whole point of being there was to set up home.
One song that always comes to mind to frame that time, is the National’s “Heavenfaced”:
“Hit the ceiling, then you fall
Things are tougher than we are.”

And they were. Not all the time, for there were those long golden-soaked afternoons, spent strolling between pubs and down sepia’d alleyways. For two nature-lovers, there was plenty to do in terms of what comes for free (You make the best of what you Have)… and still.

We were younger then, and rough around the edges, and still a bit raw at the prospect of suddenly living under the same roof. I had taken the leap from East Sussex to Bedfordshire, after eighteen months of online interaction and weekends spent barrelling up and down the countryside, through the capital; we’d decided the to-and-fro visits were a bit ridiculous, in light of our strengthening bond. The trouble lay in my timing. It was October 2009, and the country was floundering in recession. Not that I was really aware of it at the time. My blinkers were still firmly in place, while focusing on recovery from anorexia nervosa. How dire our situation would become only sank in when Jimmi left his job to find hours better suited to our relationship, and instead found the market almost empty.

When he signed on the dole in late 2008, neither of us expected him to still be heading into the Job Centre until January 2010, when a reprieve came. There were a few glimmers of light along the way, all of which were extinguished by the ineptitude of would-be employers and agency staff (one of the latter forgot to mention that a job happened to be on a building site, and would therefore require the necessary protective clothing and shoes. J had driven out at 6am over black ice, and – unable to enter the site – had to turn back. I can’t describe to you the relief and fear I felt, waking to find him home so soon.)

For my part, I spent hours, days, months, wandering those old streets and over the windswept Downs, dotting in and out of the local gym, while waiting on calls from potential employers. Interviews were few and far between. My morale slipped with the weather; 2009 into 2010 saw the worst snowfall for years, layering up over black ice, so it seemed that the long slog up Lancott Hill out of Eaton Bray would break my soul as well as my spine. Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “Dead Flag Blues” became sewn into that time, with the ice-claw grass and brassy sky, wreathes of mist, when the air itself froze heavy and still.

Cracked-tooth paintwork. Dark alleys. Splintered wood beams in pubs that smelled of smoke and pine, with horse brasses shining on the walls. Mud and chalk caked my hiking boots and waterproof trousers – a uniform I wore to keep warm and dry (almost) against the weather fronts that circled on the push-pull of air currents between Dunstable Downs and Ivinghoe Beacon, the latter rising magnificent against the sky in the distance. And further still, to form the great bowl of the Aylesbury Vale, there were the blue slopes of Woburn…

…and back to the breath-fogged windows of the Job Centre. The sagging chairs and boards with print-outs of work details; the briefest of conversations. The diversity of age and class, the faces with their oh-so-similar expressions: anger, frustration, wariness, fear. Downcast eyes, with the deep ashes of despair. Jimmi’s observations at the time betrayed a greater understanding of the system and our situation. I was completely out of my depth, ready to nod along with anything pushed at me so long as it got me off the damn chair, and back out for a walk or into the gym. With an eating/exercise disorder, nothing matters more than the next hit of compulsions. It was all I could do not to pace the floor while waiting to be seen.

On the dole, all the little things you take for granted – buying an extra packet of sweets, catching the bus or train to nowhere in particular for a few hours of exploring, downloading a new album from iTunes, buying birthday and Christmas presents – become so many coins counted out and measured like sand. My stamped Job Centre booklet went everywhere with me. I was terrified of losing it, in case they stopped my payments. I was treated with the same indifference as everyone else – I didn’t dare raise mental health issues, in case they prevented me from finding work. Given the use of sanctions in the welfare state today, I wouldn’t have stood a chance, as has been the case for too many people already.

Enough time has passed to sand away those sharp edges. The bitter sting of rain pelting my skin, the wind tearing at my hair and echoing that same empty song of No Employment. There was the subsequent guilt of dependency on Jimmi’s parents for financial support, with the emotional kind from the fella, firing up my spirits. But he had his own internal struggles to deal with. The only way I can describe our range of feelings at the time, is through a single word.
Nabokov put it best:

“Toska – noun /tō-skə/ – Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.
“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

2009-10 saw a forest fire of unemployment and bankruptcy run across the UK. Economic forecasts and GDP meant less to me (and most people, I imagine) than the fact Woolworths had disappeared from the high street, and queues were forming out of the Job Centre. I’d had a job set up in Luton to walk into, so I wasn’t jumping blind from Sussex. When this didn’t work out, all I could do was spruce up my CV in creative ways that weren’t complete lies. I’ve had precious little experience in anything other than cleaning and fitness training, since my state of mental health has left me unable to work in jobs that (to put it frankly) oblige me to keep still. It’s an ongoing problem, one I chip away at each year. It’s set me back financially, sometimes emotionally. But in light of the recession – when I lived in a town with rickety trade and the dulled eyes of a cat left in the rain – I’m in a stronger position. It would take that random hop over to St Albans, for a rather obscure interview, to get my life in motion again.

The rest is almost four and a half years’ history, as part of a noisy, messy and wonderful family unit.

But I haven’t forgotten Dunstable. It plays on my thoughts often, particularly when a red kite angles past, free on the chasing winds, burnished bronze under the sun. They became symbolic of hope, of a freedom we longed for while faced with the grey Everyday of a town that seemed (at the time) to be bent on draining us of our youth. Which of course, it wasn’t. In simple terms, Dunstable has been through a series of internal mistakes, combined with wider issues which have undermined its ability to sustain itself. From a well-established market town, Dunstable has gone downhill into poor trade and high unemployment, as was highlighted in a recent Daily Mail article tweeted by an old friend – a former Dunstablian – a few weeks ago.

Those pictures splintered behind my eyes, more painfully at odds than ever with the country’s (slow) economic recovery. But Dunstable’s problems run deeper than the most recent recession, and they won’t be eased with a quick-fix, either.

On the weave of human travel and commerce, Dunstable grew up from where the Icknield Way (a Neolithic route running along the chalk spine of England, from Norfolk to Wiltshire) met the Roman-made Watling Street, a significant economic route to London. While traces of Neolithic activity (such as the Round Barrow cemetery on the Downs) pin a far greater age of settlement to the area, it was the Romans who gave it the name “Durocobrivis”, setting up a posting station where travellers could change horses. When they left, and the area had become thick with woodland and undergrowth (adding to the dangers of the road for travellers) it was through royal intervention, at the behest of Henry I that Dunstable began to reform.

In 1109, the tangles of nature were cut back and royal favour was granted to those who would settle, and encourage growth of a different kind. Dunstable became a focal point for communication and trade, while playing host to a series of royal figures passing through; they left their own marks on the developing town, as further testament to its origins. King Henry I had a royal residence constructed in 1123, as a base to hunt on the surrounding countryside – this is now the site of the Old Palace Lodge hotel on Church Street.
The Eleanor Cross precinct was named for the last journey of Queen Eleanor of Castile, when her coffin was brought to Dunstable on its way to Westminster Abbey for internment. The beloved wife of King Edward I was kept in the Priory Monastery overnight, and a cross was built close to the entrance of Church Street, as part of the set of twelve created by order of the king to mark her passage. Only three of these crosses have survived; the one at Dunstable was destroyed in 1643. It’s a startlingly poignant tribute to the “Queen of Good Memory”, and a message of grief set in stones across the landscape.

There were plenty of occasions when I’d walk past something in and around town, completely unaware of its historical context until Jimmi pointed out the details. The local library held a wealth of information in its archives, and I soon learned what to look out for – all those odd lumps and bumps in the ground on our numerous hikes, turned out to be more than nature’s designs. I’d never heard of barrows before, let alone seen any. One memorable hike took us up to the small copse atop the Downs, overlooking the Aylesbury vale; beneath that lowlight shade, we stood in a sunken bowl, surrounded by what appeared to be grassy sand dunes. He told me that these were where ancient VIPs had been buried, long before the Romans came.
I always get a slight shiver walking around them – never over, because they’re already scored hard with the tyre-tracks of bikes, the tread of countless feet.

Benches speckle the Downs, set with plaques to commemorate those who once took pleasure in the undulating view. Visitors use the rip-curl of cross-winds to send their plastic kites up against the sky (much to the chagrin of J who, out cycling to fend off dole boredom and to keep up a fitness routine, was once saved from a broken nose by his helmet when a kite came plunging down like a knife.) The London Gliding Club, located at the foot of the Downs among fields that shine pewter-gold in the summer, send up their white gliders to hover vast silent shadows over the landscape. They are ubiquitous to the area, and can sometimes – on a day with strong winds – be sighted as far away as Houghton Regis. Towing them up from the ground are the TigerMoth planes, little beauties with a pleasantly familiar burring-buzz.

Dunstable holds a wealth of ancient treasures, both above and beneath its soil. Many of these have been relocated over the years, with the local museum (holding Iron and Bronze Age relics recovered from archaeological excavations) switching between buildings, from the town hall in 1925 to the Kingsbury Stables in 1927 to Priory House. Jimmi told me of how the museum was once kept in the “adult section” of the library, with staff training hawk-eyes on the kids who came to see the full-size skeleton of an Iron Age man, held frozen in time behind a glass cabinet, among books on erotic photography.

The town emblem – a livery badge known as the Dunstable Swan jewel and crafted from opaque white enamel fused over gold – was sold to the British Museum in 1966, following excavations at the friary. Those who discovered it had no real idea of its significance, as a declaration of allegiance to a noble family or a king – a pity then, that it can’t be restored to its township.

While out wandering through the Quadrant shopping precinct, I couldn’t help but notice the archaeological-dig exhibitions that had been set up in empty shop windows. The Manshead Archaeological Society is a credit to South Bedfordshire for calling attention to the region’s abundance of (pre)historical sites and artefacts, with details of each excavation logged onto their system at Winfield Street for analytical reports to be written and drawn up. It’s priceless, both for the preservation of Dunstable’s roots and as a symbolic reminder of what the town still stands for. It would benefit from making more of its past, in the way that York city has grounded much of its trade in its history. As Jimmi put it, “As a town that had many English kings and queens stay, a town that saw major historical events happen (the beginning of the end of Catholicism started in Dunstable with the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon – in Priory Church) … Dunstable needs more than a tiny visitors’ centre tucked away.”

*

You don’t have to travel up the country to find urban decay, though it’s acknowledged that the smaller towns and cities have fared poorly in comparison to their larger neighbours. Cuts to council budgets and a lack of follow-through on regeneration projects have seen local infrastructure become frail, while unemployment reflects the shuttered-down high streets and closed businesses. With a population of approximately 36,000 people and situated 30 miles north of London, Dunstable bears similar marks of a town that has gradually lost its industrial and cultural identity, even as its larger neighbours have flourished around it.

When the late Michael Partington took a wander through town in 1966 for the short Anglia Television documentary, “Focus On: Dunstable”, he found it thriving on the back of its growing motor industry. This came as a result of overspill from Luton – Bedford Vehicles, a division of Vauxhall owned by General Motors, had become a major supplier to the British Army in WWII, progressing from its bus and truck productions to the Churchill Tank. With the help of government funds, in 1942 the company was able to open a new site on Boscombe road in Dunstable, sprawling its plant over 98 acres; by the 1950’s, all bus and truck productions had gone over to Dunstable, with recruitment rates reaching almost 6,000 people. By 1953, the average wage was £10 a week, while 1958 saw the millionth Bedford commercial vehicle roll off a Dunstable line. This lively company’s production merged with that of A C Sphinx Sparking Plug Co’s Works, which had moved from Birmingham in 1934 and was later renamed A C Delco (where Jimmi’s mother and members of her family worked); together with Renault Trucks and Commer Cars, the motoring industry formed a springboard for Dunstable’s burgeoning economy.

The future seemed set – as Partington pointed out, the sleepy market town was now “wide awake.”

“Focus On: Dunstable” left an ache in my throat. There was the bustling high street, with even these levels of activity seeming healthier than the roaring rivers of exhaust fumes and tyres that channel through Dunstable today. People filled the pavements, going in and out of shops that were bright as the eyes of children. There was a sense of hope and well-being, as “big orders mean higher wages, and a sense of security.” More shops and homes were going up, to accommodate the influx of workers from surrounding areas, as well as local residents. Dunstable was set on outstripping Luton (which had been made a country borough) to hold the title of South Bedfordshire’s hub for culture and commerce.

(Inside the California Ballroom, Dunstable, for a performance by The Searchers, “Needles and Pins”.)
Image: www.dunstablehistory.co.uk

But the race to the future stalled out, with one factory closure after another, brought on by a chain-reaction of events in the UK’s automotive industry. Depending on who you’d prefer to listen to, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was either a saint or a sinner for her intervention on behalf of British Leyland, once the country’s largest car company. According to Garel Rhys, the retired director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff Business School, Thatcher saw British Leyland as “too big to fail”, bailing it out to the tune of 2.9 billion pounds of taxpayer money from 1979 to 1988. Though the company would ultimately collapse, Rhys stated that the UK’s automotive industry was saved by Thatcher’s support. “Jaguar Land Rover came out of the rescue. Mini was saved, along with Leyland Daf trucks and component firms such as Unipart.”

Those same Leyland Daf trucks were a division of British Leyland, formed in 1987 after the company was granted the British Army service contract to produce the 4 Tonne GS (general service) truck. This struck a terrible blow to General Motors, whose main market was by then in military vehicle production – pulling out of Bedford Trucks, they left it to be bought by AWD Ltd, a company owned by David John Bowes Brown, which in its turn went into receivership in 1992 and was sold to Marshall SPV in Cambridge. This came in spite of a poignant plea to the House of Commons in 1992 by Mr. David Madel, the MP for South West Bedfordshire at the time, for the company to be allowed to sell “a large order for civilian – I stress the word ‘civilian’ – lorries for Libya.” The emphasis came because Libya was at the time under UN sanctions, one of the key elements of which for the UK was an arms embargo. This, according to Minister for Trade Mr. Richard Needham in response to Mr. Madel, included “the provision of arms and related material of all types, including the sale or transfer of weapons and ammunitions, military vehicles and equipment.” While the AWD trucks were specified as civilian, there were concerns over whether some, if not all were likely to be used by the country’s military.
Of the 850 Dunstable workers at AWD prior to receivership, only about half of the 150 workers left, after redundancies, were offered jobs in Cambridge.

Mr. Madel stood again in 1993 for the support of Renault Trucks (which by that point had also run into difficulties) as well as Dunstable council’s need for extra governmental funding, in light of the sudden increase in unemployment:
“The Bedfordshire training and enterprise council is effective, but, given the difficulties of the Dunstable area, it needs an extra boost. What is needed is Government help to attract new industry into the area.”
What caught my eye, too, were his cautionary comments regarding the delicate balance between housing and employment, which Jimmi had often remarked upon while we lived in Dunstable. This seems more prevalent than ever:
“Before the employment base in the Dunstable area has been sorted out and re-established, we must take another look at the numbers and types of houses that we are required to build under Bedfordshire’s structure plan and at the time scale for that building programme. A big imbalance between housing development and employment opportunities is arising in the south of the county. Now is the time for a fresh and urgent look at that balance.”

With the nosedive in industry, the cultural aspects of Dunstable began to lose their shine too. The beautifully futuristic Civic Hall, which opened in 1964 and was later renamed the Queensway Hall, was once able to seat up to 900 people for concerts and plays, while serving 500 people for banquets; its situation on the touring circuit saw the likes of Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols and David Bowie pass through its doors, to give performances that leave once-in-a-lifetime memories.
Pulled down in 2000, the Hall now lies beneath an ASDA supermarket, while its entertainment predecessor, the California Ballroom, suffered a similar fate in the early 80’s – it now lies beneath a housing estate. Though both venues had their fair share of inherent problems, their loss has been seen as a downswing in the presence of professional live acts. Dunstable seems to have fallen off the tour circuit.

These pieces fit with others to form an image of a town now riddled with deep-running problems. The loss of free parking in the town centre further discourages shoppers from travelling in; they can just as easily head to the outskirts of town for the large retail stores and supermarkets that have set up. These offer many of the products sold by the independents and mainstream stores on the high street, under one roof. Those people who do decide to come into the centre must then battle the heavy flux-flow of traffic. It’s a stop/start process, from one set of lights to the next, and an unpleasant experience for pedestrians and drivers alike. I didn’t even dare to consider buying a bike.

Dunstable is, by an unhappy quirk of fate, also one of the largest towns in SE England without a rail connection (only adding to the congestion through and around town.) The Great Northern Railway’s branch line from Welwyn, had served Dunstable from 1858 to 1965 – it fell to the Beeching cuts, like many others, due to its decline in freight exchange and passenger numbers. This was something of a sore point for me, coming up from East Sussex, where I’d been accustomed to having a station on my doorstep. I’d arrive in Luton on a Friday evening (sweaty and bothered) to be picked up by Jimmi and taken back through the slow surge of Dunstable, then on to Eaton Bray. It took about 3 hours on a good day; travelling home on a Sunday-skeleton-service, was even more “fun.”

Rising business rates – the bane of high streets across Britain – have hit those retailers already struggling to compete with the evolving supermarkets, and internet giants like Amazon. The Book Castle, a beautiful shop on Church Street with an elegant greystone front, closed its doors in 2011 citing a reduction in sales. Its founder, Paul Bowes, who opened the shop in 1980 and sold it to the Independent Retail Group in 2008 (while maintaining the separate business of Book Castle Publishing) said that “A lot of book shops are closing because of the demand in supermarkets and online. People are therefore not visiting their high street shops… the town is going to be the poorer for losing its specialist book shop.”

I couldn’t agree more. There’s nothing to compare with that feeling of Presence when you step into a book shop – particularly one has old and fine as the Book Castle, situated in a building dated 1872, and formerly used as a drill hall by volunteer soldiers – to go sifting through titles that are tangible beneath the fingers, with unique covers and jackets. It’s the literary equivalent of choosing vinyl over downloads – yes, the latter will have the drag ‘n drop convenience, taking up a smidgen of space; but it won’t have the solidity, the textures and inimitable *crackle-pop* of the former.

Then there’s the actual experience of making a purchase – when shopping feels like an adventure. The Book Castle had a smell of nostalgia ingrained in its deep walls: dust, cold stone and warm wooden beams, and that indescribable scent of many types of paper and binding, hanging in the air like the woodsmoke of pubs. Descending the staircase to reach the bottom level where my favourite genres were kept – science fiction and fantasy – I felt like an explorer. If a title wasn’t on the shelves or had gone out of print, the staff would order it in for you with the professional charm of people who know what they’re doing, and take pride in their societal place as distributors. If a particular author had your attention, the staff recommendations would put you onto someone of their style, in a way that Amazon / iTunes algorithms still don’t quite seem to have mastered. You can’t beat a human approach to taste.
It was a wonderful place to visit, even when I was on the dole and had little spare to spend. It was somewhere to hide from the rain, and to feel more like myself. Sadly, such sentiments don’t keep shops open.

The Quadrant shopping precinct now sits desolate even on Saturday afternoons, when trade should be at its peak. A third of its stores are shuttered-down, collecting rust and sprouting weeds through their walls, despite council attempts to spruce up the shop fronts and maintain appearances. The campaigners at Long Live Dunstable: Don’t Let Dunstable Die, keep a directory website open for visitors, and maintain a Facebook page with regular updates and dedications, memories of days-past and thoughts on the future, from a community that still cares about the fate of its town.

What Dunstable needs is real industry, for all of its residents to feel that sense of pride and security again. The most recent profile of Dunstable (April 2013, Central Bedfordshire Council) showed that residents aged 16 and over who work, are more likely to be in unskilled positions: process, plant and/or machine operatives (18.6% compared to 15.8% in Central Bedfordshire) with employment mainly in wholesale and retail, education, and manufacturing.
This certainly paints the town’s past, if not also its progressive future. Dunstable’s unemployment rate – though similar to the national average – currently sits above that of Central Bedfordshire; 780 people claimed Jobseeker’s Allowance in February 2013. With the Job Centre’s closure in 2012 those seeking work must now travel to Luton to sign on, and if their experiences are anything like those of freelance journalist Harriet Williamson, they won’t be reimbursed for travel costs.

Central Bedfordshire college – formerly known as Dunstable college – was set up in 1961. Mr Madel referred to it as “a highly successful college of further education”, which had helped to provide for Dunstable’s “great bank of industrial skills.” Today, the college reflects a need for diversity in the town’s employment sectors, offering full and part-time courses that range from engineering to arts, IT & computing to sports therapy, construction to health and social care. Apprenticeship schemes are available, along with “an army of experienced trades people and professionals” drawn from small and medium-sized companies, who as lecturers enhance the education of potential future employees. It’s a synergistic approach aimed at boosting the regional economy – on his “Meet the Principal” page, Ali Hadawi CBE acknowledges that “unemployment is high”, but that the difference lies in skills provided with education: “Businesses have to be careful about how many people they employ… They also have to make sure those people they do take on can work well and be productive.”

To this end, the college works in tandem with the Incuba Innovation Centre, which was developed in partnership with Central Bedfordshire Council and the European Regional Development Fund. Full of light, spacious, and with a glittering roof of solar panels, it has the appearance of an updated Civic Hall – though the focus here is upon introducing a new industry of renewable energies to Dunstable, with support given to fledgling businesses “that champion a greener economy.” They are provided with classrooms, hot desk facilities and meeting rooms to, as Principal Hadawi put it, “offer business development… for those working on developing ideas in the renewable energies field.” In the short film “Dunstable: The Next Chapter”, shot in late 2014 as part of Dunstable Town Council’s corporate plan for the next three years, he added that “the greener renewable technology arena promises to be one of the largest growth industries worldwide.” With the drive to cut harmful emissions and reduce dependency on fossil fuels (not to mention the global market volatility often accompanying them), alternative/renewable energies form a progressive industry that’s not likely to peter out any time soon. Writing for the Economist, senior editor Edward Lucas said that “The International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organisation often criticised for its focus on fossil fuels, says the world will need to stump up about $23 trillion over the next 20 years to finance continued fossil-fuel extraction, but the prospect of much cheaper solar power and storage capability may put investors off. The story may be not so much what falling oil prices mean for clean energy than what the prospect of clean energy will mean for the oil price.”

More locally, Dunstable could see real benefits from this versatile mix of on-site training and business accommodation. Bringing students into an environment where they can explore a fast-developing industry, there’s the potential for expansion and putting Dunstable’s name back on the map, as a destination for those with an eye on the future.

But still, those high street shops must be open for new arrivals, as well as established residents. The town centre needs to become attractive again.
Working with Central Bedfordshire Council and business partners, Dunstable Town Council’s masterplan was drawn up for the regeneration of the town covering 2014-2016. Particular focus was given to improving connections between different parts of the town, easing congestion, and bringing retail, leisure, community, residential and office facilities up to scratch. An example of this redevelopment is the three-pronged work on transport infrastructure. The Dunstable-Luton busway opened in September 2013, and carries passengers on a straightforward route serving the town centres of Dunstable, Houghton Regis and Luton, bypassing their congestion while providing a fast route to major transport links like Luton airport and train station. What was once a 40-60 minute one-way journey has been cut to approximately 15 minutes. It’s ideal for commuters and shoppers. Add to this the other two major transport developments – the A5-M1 link road and the Woodside link road – and you have an area that’s attractive to businesses wishing to set up in the nearby retail parks. With deliveries conveyed on alternate routes, the clutter of lorries often found snarling up the town centres will be taken away, improving the sound and air quality for retailers and customers. Cafes and restaurants overlooking the centre will benefit from more peaceful views. Dunstable’s streets won’t feel quite so charged and chaotic. A bigger step would be to bring back free parking throughout the week, thus encouraging local residents and those passing through to give the shopping precincts a chance. If employment levels pick up and feed down into wage packets, Dunstable could see another resurgence in trade. Going on my own experience, a bit of financial security does wonders for confidence and the spirit.

Running parallel with the need to support businesses, there’s the need to preserve Dunstable’s historical identity. As part of the council’s corporate priorities, these restoration projects take on specific points across town, with the current focus being on the Priory and its gardens. Sadly, the same relief hasn’t been extended to the Norman King pub, a once-proud and elegant structure dating back to the time of King Henry I.

I was only a resident of the town for a year or so, and while I didn’t have the privilege to drink my first (legal) pints in there, Jimmi’s anecdotes left their mark on my mind. It’s difficult to imagine him playing darts with old school friends now; or indeed, to remember how it felt when he first took me inside and I saw the beautiful sweep of the ceiling, felt the thick walls under my hands. Those white walls are now blackened, the roof gone, after the pub was burnt out in a senseless arson attack on the 10th August 2011. The structural damage was enough for the Grade II listed building to be stripped of its conservation status, and for a long time the poor cigarette-stub of what remained stared out over the street until it was boarded up. I can’t bring myself to look at pictures of what remains.

TV presenter Kevin McCloud MBE, raised in Dunstable, put it best:
“Dunstable is short on great historic buildings and so the removal of any ancient scrap of architecture from the town is an appalling idea. We need to conserve the old to help us understand the present (and, for that matter, the future) and heritage is not a burden but an amenity and a great blessing for our society. It gives us a sense of place and connection. The loss of the ancient fabric of The Norman King will be a crying shame and a further erosion of that connection. It’s appalling that there has been no collective will among the authorities to keep as much as possible that remains of this fine old building and to insist on a sensitive programme of repair and even reinstatement of the structure and roof lost to the fire. Apart from anything else, I used to drink there and will miss it.”

The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, recently slammed No Gender December – an awareness campaign backed by Greens senator Larissa Waters, to highlight the consequences of gender-marketing toys to children. The PM insists that he doesn’t support “that kind of political correctness” and asks that we all “let boys be boys and girls be girls.”

Well, no. As Senator Waters put it, “This isn’t about some toys being off-limits. It’s about children being free to play with whatever interests them without fear of being judged or bullied.”

There are the key words – “judged” and “bullied.” They come with very real consequences for children, for societies.
As an authority figure, someone people (might) look to as an example, it would’ve been nice if Mr Abbott had taken a more responsible line when broadcasting his views: but then again, these are clearly his beliefs, too. Which is a shame. It’s worth noting that his approval ratings have taken a good kicking from women voters in particular, with only 37% believing him fit to be their chosen leader.

The sad truth is that his views are in no way singular. They’re just another facet of the “outdated stereotypes about boys and girls” that feed into “very serious problems such as domestic violences and the gender pay gap.”
In response to Senator Waters, the Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi was a little more direct:

“Frankly, I think [Waters has] consumed too much Christmas eggnog to come up with an idea like this… To say you’re giving a boy a truck or a hammer is somehow leading to domestic violence and gender pay gaps is simply bizarre.”

But then again, toys are only a few symptoms of a much wider problem involving sociocultural beliefs and attitudes about gender roles. The denial of certain types of behaviour and thinking – basic rights – for both girls and boys, create fissures between the sexes that become filled with beliefs that cause grief and pain, even when we’re not wholly aware of it happening. Doubt and frustration about what it means to be a girl or a boy. Repression of individuality.

Awareness is about picking apart the knots that help to perpetuate gender stereotypes and segregation, many of which begin at birth.

Take gender colour-coding. Walk into your average nursery and you’ll know from a cursory glance about the room what the baby’s sex is. From the moment we’re born, our identities are pinned to us with the associations “pretty in pink” for a girl, and boisterously blue for a boy. These perceptions have apparently become so ingrained in the public mind, that a backlash occurs when the perfectly rational argument for equality is proposed. As though by offering girls positive alternative role models – “women who do amazing things. Scientists and sportswomen and musicians and businesswomen and activists” – their progression through life is somehow inhibited by “politically correct” meddling.

In email responses to the PinkStinks campaign, set up by twin sisters Abi and Emma Moore, one little girl wrote: “I am nine years old, and I think PinkStinks is my voice. Girls like me shouldn’t be forced to like pink. Can you think of a good name for girls who don’t want to be girly girls but aren’t tomboys?”

And on the flipside, recrimination: “Do you sell campaign T-shirts in pink? And do you have any with ‘I am a leftwing communist loony trying to brainwash girls’?”

Abi called it “a wholesale pinkification of girls” that “sells children a lie – that there’s only one way to be a ‘proper girl’ – and it sets them on a journey, at a very, very early age. It’s a signpost, telling them that beauty is more valued than brains; it limits horizons, and it restricts ambitions.” Emma, referring to the vitriol directed at she and her sister for the campaign, said “We’ve tapped into something that’s clearly very deep and very powerful. Some people plainly feel attacked.”

This colour-coding is far more modern than many would like to believe. In June 1918, the American Ladies’ Home Journal told new mothers that pink was more suitable for a boy, being “a more decided and stronger colour”, while blue was seen to be “delicate and dainty”, and therefore “prettier for the girl.” Same old clichés, different colour-coordination. The switch-around didn’t occur until post-WWII; in 1948, it was noted in the Chicago Reader that “royal watchers” were apparently alerted to the fact Princess Elizabeth “was obviously expecting a boy, because a temporary nursery in Buckingham Palace was gaily decked out with blue satin bows.” Interestingly, it was also common practise until WWI for male babies and small boys to wear dresses until breeching, when they were put into trousers. The average age of this rite of passage was between two and seven. So no, boys haven’t always been prepared for rougher play in their clothing, and were once almost indistinguishable from girls, particularly with the fashions for longer hair. I have photographs of my great-grandfather as a toddler, dressed in a flowing gown and with beautiful curls, standing next to his mother.

But colours and connotations have come to define our perceptions and feelings, our reactions to one another. A study on the psychological effects of pink by Alexander Schauss in the 70’s, showed that “of 153 male prisoners put in cells painted pink, 98.7 per cent were weaker after being in the pink cells for only 15 minutes – presumably because of associations with the colour pink and femininity.” Which sort of flies in the face of the afore-mentioned evidence that, once upon a time, pink was the accepted-conventional colour for boys and men. It’s funny what a cultural placebo effect can do.

More troubling, is the light this shines on yet another facet of that belief that girls and women are vulnerable, the weaker sex; that femininity is something to be ashamed of, especially if you’re male. My landlady recently told me of an acquaintance who refused to let her son wear a “slightly effeminate” shirt in the two-minute drive from her house to his own; he’d got caught in a rain shower. Said acquaintance was convinced that he would contract feminine attributes and/or homosexuality if he wore the borrowed shirt, rather than a cold if he didn’t.

If you believe that kids don’t notice these gender stereotypes, that it’s an issue only adults care about, think again. From as early as five months old, children notice their surroundings in relation to familiarity (that safety-blanket feeling of “Me”) and build upon what they retain, in their preferences:

“Researchers have shown that male and female infants as young as 5 months of age become familiar with vastly different surroundings: while female infants were often dressed in pink, had pink pacifiers, and yellow bedding, boys were more likely to have blue bedding and curtains in their rooms (Pomerleau, Bolduc, Malcuit, & Cossette, 1990). Since parents surround girls with objects that are pink and boys with objects that are blue, infants may develop a preference for these colours based on familiarity. Another possibility is that once children identify with a certain gender, they seek out gender-related information and choose toys and colours that are commonly associated
with that gender… Kohlberg’s (1966) early work on gender development suggests that children seek out gender-related information and look for ways to conform to these gender norms.” – Pretty in pink: The early development of gender-stereotyped colour preferences

So the next time you choose an item of clothing, or plan out the style of your bedroom, or daydream about the colour of your new car, ask yourself how many of your preferences are born of personal appeal, and how much are based upon the image you feel you “should” present to the world.

Then there are the toys.

“At some point over the last three decades the toy industry decided that parents and children could not be trusted to choose to what to buy without colour coded gender labelling… As every successful marketeer knows, differentiation makes for greater profit margins and segmentation gives you a bigger market overall.

So with three-year-old girls only being able to ‘choose’ pink tricycles then the manufacturer can charge more for that special girlie shade with a premium ‘Princess’ saddle. And of course that trike can’t be handed on to a brother or nephew, ensuring further sales of blue bikes with Action Man handlebars.
But what may be driving profit margins is limiting children’s’ choice – and experiences. And ultimately limiting the UK’s social and economic potential.” – Chi Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central: “Gendered Marketing Perpetuates Stereotypes, Constrains Minds and Limits Our Children’s Potential.”

“Boys toys tend to contain didactic information, with technical instructions and fitting things together with Lego and Meccano, whereas girls’ toys tend to be around imaginative and creative play, which develop different skills.”

But what if a boy would prefer to play with toys marketed to girls? Thea Hughes, who started the Play Unlimited campaign which has got under Tony Abbott’s skin, found that her son Harper was being subjected to prejudice based on his preferences for pink and wearing dresses.
“I could see him starting to become aware that he’s being judged, and that he’s unable to make the choices he’d like to make, because of the social pressure. At such a young age, it’s just so sad.”

And on the flipside, Tricia Lowther of Durham in the UK, knew of her six-year-old daughter Marianne’s love for the Pixar film Cars. But when buying juice cartons in the supermarket, Lowther found that “it was a choice between cars and princesses, and I got her the Cars ones, sure she’d like them”; Marianne hid the cartons, telling her mother that “it’s boyish” and that she didn’t want anyone to know of her preference for this.

It hasn’t always been like this. I can remember, in the mid-80’s as a child, a limited Tinkerbell range of make-up and accessories; a few Barbie dolls. For the most part, toys on the shelves were gender-neutral, thanks to the second-wave feminists who had focused on driving out the typically accepted gender roles and stereotyping. This included non-sexist parenting, built on the belief that children should be able to choose whatever and whoever they wish to play with. So toys really were just toys – no Boys aisles and Girls aisles.

Fast forward to today, and feminism has moved more women into professions once held strictly by men, while men themselves have accepted – willingly – a great share of the domestic side of things. But when it comes to the markets aimed at children – toys, clothes, film tie-in merchandise etc – “stereotypes have never been so defined, or rigidly enforced. Pink and blue have triumphed in the toy market, and there are often serious social penalties for children who breach the divide. The rise of highly gendered toys is a result of capitalism, but it also suggests a deep, subconscious unease with the advances of the past few decades.”

In many films, books and video games aimed at both genders, it’s the boy-hero who saves the day, while the helpless princess (or whoever, she generally isn’t given enough characteristics for an audience member to care) waits breathlessly in a castle/haunted mansion/on a rail line, to be rescued.
He is typically portrayed as strong, fearless, unbeatable. Unbreakable. Unable to break down.
Especially if no one is prepared to believe he is actually capable of feeling so wretched, of being unable to express himself or to shoulder the burdens of the world as well as his own.

A boy’s life is geared towards activity, towards being the winner in his own small world, before tackling the bigger one –

– without consideration for the fact that he might just want to curl up with a book, or in front of a computer. He might want to sit alone, quiet and still, to write in the same way as the poets he admires. He might want to vanish into a world of his own making, where he can feel and express emotions without being called a ‘wuss’ or a ‘gayboy.’

If a boy wants to prioritize deep thinking and emotions over actions, to wear the clothes and make-up and hair-styles that he’s seen his female peers wear, he faces bullying and assault, with negative commentary about his sexuality. Anything associated with “feminine” – whether it’s crying in public or dancing ballet, wearing pink or admitting to a shy and reticent nature – equates with “wrong” and “weak”. Boys are taught to stay separate from girls by their toys, their early interactions, and through the reactions of those around them.

“Nine-year-old Grayson Bruce had been told not to bring his My Little Pony bag to school in North Carolina because it was a trigger for the bullying he was experiencing, which has included punching, pushing and name-calling…
11-year-old Michael Morones, also of North Carolina, spoke about his recent suicide attempt, which has left him in a persistent vegetative state. The reasons for self-harm are always complicated, but Morones had experienced problems with bullying. He tried to kill himself the evening he told his mother: “‘I am so tired of people at school calling me gay because I like My Little Pony.'”

For girls who want to become engineers, mathematicians and scientists, the void starts with what is issued to them. Chi Onwurah, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, believes that by limiting children with gender stereotypes, we’re setting ourselves up for “big economic problems.” At the start of her own engineering degree, 12% of her peers were women – 30 years later, that proportion is down to 8%.
“There are thousands of jobs going unfilled, and in addition a lot of our engineers are in their 50s and retiring in the next five years. At the same time we have the lowest proportion in Europe of women who are professional engineers.”

Play and child development psychologist Dr Amanda Gummer says that when it comes to careers, genuine interaction between the genders, and a wide range of skills-based play available for all, are the crucial elements.“Nobody plays with Lego and learns how to build houses, but they might learn how to overlap bricks to create a stable structure. It’s more about confidence and familiarity than an actual skill set.”

But what about when our bodies begin to change – when hormones kick in, and it can feel like the world is going to end?
(My personal experience of puberty.)

In July this year, an Always sanitary hygiene advert sought to reclaim the phrase ‘like a girl.” When the women and boys participating were asked by film-maker Lauren Greenfield to run ‘like a girl’, silliness ensued – flailing arms and legs, in a display that reminded me of what we knew in school as ‘running like a Polly Pocket’: that tiny little model of a girl, all stiff hinged joints and awkward movements, used as an example of feminine aptitude for sports. It’s funny what comes back when faced with your own past, and someone else’s future.

The same question put to prepubescent girls showed the reality of their strength and determination.. They gave it everything they had. It’s a powerful and disturbing message. I had to watch it several times for the truth to sink in: that somewhere in adolescence, girls becoming women form perceptions about their bodies that are wholly negative, and based upon what society tells them is meant by ‘feminine’.

As the ever-quotable Tony Porter said – “If it would destroy [a 12-year-old boy] to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?”

And what happens to the girl-princess who remains tied up and tied down by a sense of her own vulnerability, waiting for someone to come to her rescue?

“Internalized sexism is defined as the involuntary belief by girls and women that the lies, stereotypes and myths about girls and women that are delivered to everyone in a sexist society ARE TRUE. Girls and women, boys and men hear the sexist messages (lies and stereotypes) about women over their entire lifetimes. They hear that women are stupid, weak, passive, manipulative, with no capacity for intellectual pursuits or leadership.

There are two logical, predictable consequences of a lifetime of such messages. First, boys / men will grow to believe many of the messages, and treat women accordingly. They will be thoroughly indoctrinated into their role in sexism, protecting their male privilege by colluding with the perpetuation of sexism.

But there is a second logical consequence – the same messages also stick to girls and women, resulting in internalized sexism / internalized misogyny. Women and girls are taught to act out the lies and stereotypes, doubting themselves and other females (sometimes called “horizontal hostility.”) This is the way women collude with the perpetuation of sexism.

For the sexist system to be maintained and passed on to the next generation, we all must believe the messages (lies and stereotypes) to some degree, and collude with sexism by performing our assigned roles.” – Cultural Bridges to Justice, “Internalized Sexism / Internalized Misogyny.“

Campaigns like #YesAllWomen focus on giving girls and women across the world a voice. In the aftermath of the Isla Vista murders, this tapped a narrative both complex and wholly depressing.

“The reason women mobilized so quickly after the shooting is because we recognized immediately the language and ideaology in Rodger’s videos and manifesto; the over-the-top sexual entitlement; the rage against women who ‘dared’ to reject him; the antiquated, but nonetheless terrifying, belief that women should not be in control of their own sexual choices.”

Inequality of pay, gender-discrimination in the workplace and the legal systems, inappropriate touching, abusive relatives, manipulative and domineering partners coercing victims into signing over bank details, gaslighting (where an abusive partner breaks down the victim’s emotional and mental reserves so they’re unable to trust their own perceptions and are thus more likely to stay in the relationship.) Rape culture and sexual entitlement – yes, even in the “nice guys”, the ones who “aren’t like the others”, and so feel that if they offer support to a girl, their natural payback is the right to Get Some.

“We live in an entitlement culture where guys think they need to be having sex with girls in order to be happy and fulfilled. That in a culture that constantly celebrates the narrative of guys trying hard, overcoming challenges, concocting clever ruses and automatically getting a woman thrown at them as a prize as a result, there will always be some guy who crosses the line into committing a violent crime to get what he “deserves,” or get vengeance for being denied it…

We are not the lovable nerdy protagonist who’s lovable because he’s the protagonist. We’re not guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick of our dreams as long as we work hard enough at it. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by “getting the girl” in the end. And when our clever ruses and schemes to “get girls” fail, it’s not because the girls are too stupid or too bitchy or too shallow to play by those unwritten rules we’ve absorbed.

It’s because other people’s bodies and other people’s love are not something that can be taken nor even something that can be earned—they can be given freely, by choice, or not.

We need to get that. Really, really grok that, if our half of the species is ever going to be worth a damn. Not getting that means that there will always be some percent of us who will be rapists, and abusers, and killers. And it means that the rest of us will always, on some fundamental level, be stupid and wrong when it comes to trying to understand the women we claim to love.” – Arthur Chu, “Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds.“

So yes, Mr Abbott – people who believe in “politically correct” gender equality, will continue to push for this in as many ways as possible. Those innocuous little threads can become big knots. From economics to mental health, the risks are there for future generations – we have to supply children with the skills and free will to achieve whatever they can, and the emotional support to think and feel whatever comes to them, without fear of peer pressure or recriminations.
Above all, we need to teach girls and boys to look out for each other.

Clarice Starling, in Thomas Harris’ The Silence of the Lambs, delivers a crucial message of what it means to be a woman in a man’s world. There’s the all-important balance between working to professional standards, while dealing with some of the most soul-darkening situations imaginable – and facing up to the fact that the enemy is more sympathetic of your cause than your own establishment. Her awareness is a keen blade.

‘”Couple of things, Starling. I look for first-rate forensics from you, but I need more than that. You don’t say much, and that’s okay, neither do I. But don’t ever feel you’ve got to have a new fact to tell me before you can bring something up. There aren’t any silly questions. You’ll see things that I won’t, and I want to know what they are. Maybe you’ve got a knack for this. All of a sudden we’ve got this chance to see if you do.”
Listening to him, her stomach lifting and her expression properly rapt, Starling wondered how long Crawford had known he’d use her on this case, how hungry for a chance he had wanted her to be. He was a leader, with a leader’s frank-and-open bullshit, all right.
…
“One other thing: an investigation like this is a zoo. It’s spread out over a lot of jurisdictions, and a few are run by losers. We have to get along with them so they won’t hold out on us.”‘
–
‘”Sheriff, this kind of a sex crime has some aspects that I’d rather say to you just between us men, you understand what I mean?” Crawford said, indicating Starling’s presence with a small movement. of his head. He hustled the smaller man into a cluttered office off the hall and closed the door.
Starling was left to mask her umbrage before the
gaggle of deputies. Her teeth hard together, she gazed on Saint Cecilia and returned the saint’s ethereal smile while eavesdropping through the door.’

“In Clarice, we see an action/adventure character who is full of feelings from beginning to end, one who never doubts that feelings are an asset, a source of power. We watch her balance her intuitive clarity with a skilful manoeuvring of frank and intimate conversation. She has an uncanny ease with emotionally piercing scrutiny by her male bosses, peers and even the male killers. Close examination of her most private thoughts does not rattle her. If anything, she becomes more focused. She is responsive, not passive, in the face of male betrayals and holds a mirror for the transgressors to look at themselves.” – Jane Alexander Stewart, Ph.D.,
San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal

Something that’s come to my mind only recently, while watching the film again (and subsequently going back to the book), reflects a transition going on in my own life. Starling has always been a role model; this was based upon her intelligence, unassuming nature, and ability to stand up for herself in some truly excruciating situations. What I’d failed to note, was her femininity. The way she doesn’t try to disguise her gender, or play up to it for the sake of gaining ground with men, except where it suits her own needs:

“I understood you’d brief me, Dr. Chilton,” Starling said.
“I can do that while we walk.” He came around his desk, looking at his watch. “I have a lunch in half an hour.”
Dammit, she should have read him better, quicker. He might not be a total jerk. He might know something useful. It wouldn’t have hurt her to simper once, even if she wasn’t at it.”

She trains hard, applies herself in classes, works among and against men – and doesn’t try to be one of them. It’s worth noting that her best friend is another woman, equally as competent, and willing to go up against the everyday bombardment of male privilege/sexual entitlement for the sake of ambitions and the needs of others.

‘Ardelia Mapp saw the fatigue in her face. “What did you do today, girl?” Mapp always asked question as if the answers could make no possible difference.
“Wheedled a crazy man with come all over me.”
“I wish I had time for a social life – I don’t know how you manage it, and school too.”
Starling found that she was laughing. Ardelia Mapp laughed with her, as much as the small joke was worth. Starling did not stop, and she heard herself from far away, laughing and laughing. Through Starling’s tears, Mapp looked strangely old and her smile had sadness in it.’

It would have been easy for both Harris and Demme to cast Starling/Foster as a hard-line ice queen, or a vulnerable heroine in need of assistance from male colleagues, or as a rough ‘n tumble tomboy hinging her gags on perceived male weaknesses. Indeed, there are chances for Starling to take advantage when moments of vulnerability in her opponents arise – she uses the subtle-bitter sheen of that mirror, held up for them see what they are with their own eyes.

‘”When I told that deputy he and I shouldn’t talk in front of a woman, that burned you, didn’t it?”
“Sure.”
“It was just smoke. I wanted to get him by himself.”
“I know that.”
“Okay.” Crawford slammed the trunk and turned away.
Starling couldn’t let it go.
“It matters, Mr. Crawford.”
He was turning back to her, laden with his fax machine and briefcase, and she had his full attention.
“Those cops know who you are,” she said. “They look at you to see how to act.” She stood steady, shrugged her shoulders, opened her palms. There it was, it was true.
Crawford performed a measurement on his cold scales.
“Duly noted, Starling. Now get on with the bug.”
“Yes sir.”
She watched him walk away, a middle-aged man laden with cases and rumpled from flying, his cuffs muddy from the riverbank, going home to what he did at home.
She would have killed for him then. That was one of Crawford’s great talents.’
–
‘”What you’re doing is coming into my hospital to conduct an interview and refusing to share information with me.”
“I’m acting on my instructions, Dr. Chilton. I have the U.S. Attorney’s night number here. Now please, either discuss it with him or let me do my job.”
“I’m not a turnkey here, Miss Starling. I don’t come running down here at night just to let people in and out. I had a ticket to Holiday on Ice.”
He realized he’d said a ticket. In that instant Starling saw his life, and he knew it.
She saw his bleak refrigerator, the crumbs on the TV tray where he ate alone, the still piles his things stayed in for months until he moved them— she felt the ache of his whole yellow-smiling Sen-Sen lonesome life— and switchblade-quick she knew not to spare him, not to talk on or look away. She stared into his face, and with the smallest tilt of her head, she gave him her good looks and bored her knowledge in, speared him with it, knowing he couldn’t stand for the conversation to go on.
He sent her with an orderly named Alonzo.’

Starling is a flawed human, like any other: willing to learn and to engage; straight-forward, and able to conduct herself with as much diplomacy in the face of afore-mentioned gender prejudice, as in unpredictable situations where her own life and that of others, are at risk. Her mind and soul stay resilient against the constant chipping-away at her gender.

It’s this sort of determined dignity that I relish in literature and on-screen – no overt attempts to pander to men’s goodwill, nor extreme agitation against their advances in tit-for-tat mocking. More than once, I catch myself wondering if it’s boredom at their behaviour that keeps the thin-lipped resolution in place. She’s able to withstand bullshit while exposing the “transgressors” for what they are, and to work through and around her internal knots as much as the external ones, for the sake of those in need of her help.

First and foremost, Starling is her own woman, getting on with more important things.